Flushing fun for feline

What do you do with a mouse when you catch it at 4:30 in the morning in front of your cat? Bruce Poliquin of Auburn shared that mouse tale Thursday at his Josslyn Street home.

After waking up and seeing one of their four cats eyeing the bottom of a door, curiosity got to him. He yanked open the door to find a mouse staring up at him. Then it darted for cover while Poliquin dashed for a trash bag.

Using the bag, he eventually caught the mouse. But, at that time, the only thing he said he could think of was flushing the rodent down the toilet. The equally curious cat followed him to the bathroom, then stood on its hind legs peering into the commode as Poliquin emptied the bag.

When he flushed it the first time, the mouse went round and round the bowl, while the cat furiously batted a paw at it, trying to catch it. Then he had two problems: trying to keep the cat from retrieving the mouse and keeping the mouse in the toilet.

“It took three flushes to go down, at 4:30 in the morning!” Poliquin said.

– Terry Karkos

Eye-catching Bug

Lou Saucier, a Modern Pest Services pest control technician, drives a spiffy white Volkswagen Beetle a short distance to work daily in Augusta. From there, the self-contained killing machine – what he calls the VW because it contains everything he needs to exterminate rodents and bugs – is driven to clients’ homes all over Maine.

The Beetle isn’t decorated with a giant cockroach, but it does have columns of black ants painted over the front wheelwell fenders marching from a brightly-colored, picturesque residential setting on the sides to the hood and down to the front bumper.

“People point at it and laugh, but they don’t chuck things at me,” he said Thursday morning at a client’s house in Auburn.

– Terry Karkos

Project is in the wind

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Harley Lee bowed his head Wednesday and kept his eyes cast downward as it became clear that most state land use regulators were not in favor of his wind energy project on mountain tops in northern Franklin County.

He and about 150 other people sat through intervenor comments, for and against, and the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission’s presentation on why the project should be approved.

After the commission ordered LURC staff to draft denial for the project, Lee stood among supporters, referring all comments to lawyer Jeff Thaler, representing Maine Mountain Power LLC made up of Lee’s Endless Energy Corp. of Yarmouth and California-based Edison Mission Group.

“I feel lousy,” Lee said, a day after the commission’s meeting. “I was shocked” by the outcome.

That project has been in development for 15 years, he said. “We worked” to mitigate all impacts.

“People in Maine supported our wind farm; hikers were in favor of it,” he said. The support in favor was 9-1, he added.